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Date: Wed, 17 Jul 2002 14:41:55 -0400
From: Chet Ramey <chet AT nike DOT ins DOT cwru DOT edu>
To: cygwin AT sources DOT redhat DOT com
Subject: Bash-2.05b-release available for FTP
Reply-To: chet AT po DOT CWRU DOT Edu
Message-ID: <020717184155.AA55323.SM@nike.ins.cwru.edu>
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Introduction
============

The first public release of bash-2.05b is now available with the URLs

ftp://ftp.cwru.edu/pub/bash/bash-2.05b.tar.gz
ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/bash/bash-2.05b.tar.gz

and from the usual GNU mirror sites.

This tar file does not include the formatted documentation
(postscript, dvi, html, and nroffed versions of the manual pages);
that may be retrieved with the URLs

ftp://ftp.cwru.edu/pub/bash/bash-doc-2.05b.tar.gz
ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/bash/bash-doc-2.05b.tar.gz

When unpacking the documentation, make sure to extract the tar file
in the bash-2.05b source directory.

Diffs from bash-2.05a are available with the URLs

ftp://ftp.cwru.edu/pub/bash/bash-2.05a-2.05b.diff.gz
ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/bash/bash-2.05a-2.05b.diff.gz

Make sure to apply the diffs using `patch -p1' from within a
bash-2.05a source directory.

Please use `bashbug' to report bugs with this version.  It is built
and installed at the same time as bash.

Installation
============

Please read the README file first.

Installation instructions are provided in the INSTALL file.

New Features
============

This is an intermediate release.

Bash-2.05b is a second intermediate release to make some of the major new
features available before the eventual release of bash-3.0.  This release
introduces the first major changes slated for the next major bash release,
with a few other new features.  The major new feature is multibyte
character support: I integrated the IBM patch, hopefully without
introducing too many new bugs.  I want to get feedback on this and the rest
before moving forward. 

Read the file NEWS in the bash-2.05b distribution for a complete description
of the new features.  Here is a short list:

o support for multibyte characters has been added to both bash and readline

o the DEBUG trap is now run *before* simple commands, ((...)) commands,
  [[...]] conditional commands, and for ((...)) loops

o the shell now performs arithmetic in the largest integer size the machine
  supports (intmax_t)

o there is a new \D{...} prompt expansion; passes the `...' to strftime(3)
  and inserts the result into the expanded prompt

o there is a new `here-string' redirection operator:  <<< word

o when displaying variables, function attributes and definitions are shown
  separately, allowing them to be re-used as input (attempting to re-use
  the old output would result in syntax errors).

o `read' has a new `-u fd' option to read from a specified file descriptor

o the bash debugger in examples/bashdb has been modified to work with the
  new DEBUG trap semantics, the command set has been made more gdb-like,
  and the changes to $LINENO make debugging functions work better

o the expansion of $LINENO inside a shell function is only relative to the
  function start if the shell is interactive -- if the shell is running a
  script, $LINENO expands to the line number in the script.  This is as
  POSIX-2001 requires

Changes have been made to the Readline library being released at
the same time as bash-2.05b, readline-4.3, so that Bash can be
linked against an already-installed Readline library rather than
the private version in lib/readline.  Only readline-4.3 and later
versions are able to provide all of the symbols that bash-2.05b
requires; earlier versions of the Readline library will not work
correctly.

A complete list of changes between bash-2.05a and bash-2.05b is
available in the file CHANGES; the relevant portions are appended.

Readline
========

Also available is a new release of the standalone readline library,
version 4.3, with its own configuration scripts and Makefiles. 
It can be retrieved with the URLs

ftp://ftp.cwru.edu/pub/bash/readline-4.3.tar.gz
ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/readline/readline-4.3.tar.gz

and from the usual GNU mirror sites.

Diffs from readline-4.2a are available with the URLs

ftp://ftp.cwru.edu/pub/bash/readline-4.2a-4.3.diff.gz
ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/readline/readline-4.2a-4.3.diff.gz

Make sure to install the patches using `patch -p1 < patch-file' from
within a readline-4.2a source directory.

The formatted Readline documentation is included in the readline
distribution tar file.

A separate announcement listing the changes in Readline is being
distributed.

As always, thanks for your help.

Chet

+========== CHANGES ==========+
This document details the changes between this version, bash-2.05b-release,
and the previous version, bash-2.05b-beta2.

1.  Changes to Bash

a.  Fixed an off-by-one error in the function that translates job
    specifications.

b.  Note that we're running under Emacs and disable line editing if
    $EMACS == `t'.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This document details the changes between this version, bash-2.05b-beta2,
and the previous version, bash-2.05b-beta1.

1.  Changes to Bash

a.  Fixed the /= and %= arithmetic operators to catch division by zero.

b.  Added putenv, setenv, unsetenv to getenv replacement for completeness.

c.  Fixed a bug that could cause the -O expand_aliases invocation option
    to not take effect.

d.  Fixed a problem with process substitution that resulted in incorrect
    behavior when the number of process substitutions in an individual
    command approached 64.

2.  Changes to Readline

a.  Fixed a problem with backward-char-search when on a system with support
    for multibyte characters when running in a locale without any multibyte
    characters.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This document details the changes between this version, bash-2.05b-beta1,
and the previous version, bash-2.05b-alpha1.

1.  Changes to Bash

a.  Fixed a problem when parsing a POSIX.2 character class name while
    evaluating a bracket expression containing multibyte characters.

b.  Changed the help text for `bind' to make it clear that any command
    that may be placed in ~/.inputrc is a valid argument to `bind'.

c.  Added `help' builtin entries for `((', `[[', and arithmetic for.

d.  malloc updated again:
	o slightly better overflow and underflow detection by putting the
	  chunk size at the beginning and end of the chunk and making
	  sure they match in free/realloc
	o partial page allocated to make things page-aligned no longer
	  completely wasted
	o block coalescing now enabled by default
	o splitting and coalescing enabled for 32-byte chunks, the most
	  common size requested
	o fixed a problem that resulted in spurious underflow messages and
	  aborts
	o bin sizes are precomputed and stored in an array rather than
	  being computed at run time
	o malloc will return memory blocks back to the system if the block
	  being freed is at the top of the heap and of sufficient size to
	  make it worthwhile
	o malloc/free/realloc now inline memset instead of calling the
	  libc function; uses Duff's device for good performance

e.  Check for getservent(); make the service name completion code dependent
    on its presence.

f.  Changed the readline callback that executes a command bound to a key
    sequence to not save the executed command on the history list and to
    save and restore the parsing state.

g.  Changes to lib/sh/snprintf.c:  fixed some bugs in the `g' and `G'
    floating point format display; implemented the "'" flag character
    that turns on thousands' grouping; fixed behavior on systems where
    MB_CUR_MAX does not evaluate to a constant.

h.  The `unset' builtin no longer returns a failure status when asked to
    unset a previously-unset variable or function.

i.  Changes to the build system to make it easier to cross-compile bash
    for different systems.

j.  Added `,' to  the characters that are backslash-escaped during filename
    completion, to avoid problems with complete-into-braces and RCS filenames
    containing commas.

k.  Some changes to the multibyte character support code to avoid many calls
    to strlen().

l.  Bash now correctly honors setting LANG to some value when LC_ALL does not
    already have a value.

m.  Fixed a bug that could cause SIGSEGV when processing nested traps with
    trap handlers.

n.  The `source/.' builtin now restores the positional parameters when it
    returns unless they were changed using the `set' builtin during the file's
    execution.

o.  Fixed a bug that caused a syntax error when a command was terminated by
    EOF.

2.  New Features in Bash

a.  There is now support for placing the long help text into separate files
    installed into ${datadir}/bash.  Not enabled by default; can be turned
    on with `--enable-separate-helpfiles' option to configure.

b.  All builtins that take operands accept a `--' pseudo-option, except
    `echo'.

c.  The `echo' builtin now accepts \0xxx (zero to three octal digits following
    the `0') in addition to \xxx (one to three octal digits) for SUSv3/XPG6/
    POSIX.1-2001 compliance.

3.  Changes to Readline

a.  Fixed a small problem in _rl_insert_char with multibyte characters.

b.  Fixes from IBM for line wrapping problems when using multibyte characters.

c.  Fixed a problem which caused the display to be messed up when the last
    line of a multi-line prompt (possibly containing invisible characters)
    was longer than the screen width.

d.  Fixed a problem with the vi-mode `r' command that ocurred on systems with
    support for multibyte characters when running in a locale without any
    multibyte characters.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This document details the changes between this version, bash-2.05b-alpha1,
and the previous version, bash-2.05a-release.

1.  Changes to Bash

a.  Some changes to work around inlining differences between compilers.

b.  Added more prototypes for internal shell typedefs, to catch argument
    passing errors when using pointers to functions.

c.  The `cd' builtin now fails in posix mode when a valid directory cannot be
    constructed from a relative pathname argument and the $PWD using pathname
    canonicalization, and the -P option has not been supplied.  Previously,
    the shell would attempt to use what the user typed, leading to weird
    values for $PWD and discrepancies between the value of $PWD and the
    actual working directory.

d.  The `cd' builtin now resets $PWD when canonicalization fails but a chdir
    to the pathname passed as an argument succeeds (when not in posix mode).

e.  The `fc' builtin has been fixed, as POSIX requires, to use the closest
    history position in range when given an out-of-range argument.

f.  The history file loading code was changed to allow lines to be saved in
    the history list from the shell startup files.

g.  `history -s args' now works bettern in compound commands.

h.  The tilde expansion code was fixed to better recognize when it's being
    invoked in an assignment context, which enables expansion after `='
    and `:'.

i.  Fixed the command name completion code so a slash is no longer appended
    to a single match if there happens to be a directory with that name in
    $PWD.

j.  Fixed compound array assignment to no longer perform alias expansion, to
    allow reserved words as array members, and to not produce extra output
    when the `-v' option had been enabled.

k.  Fixed the programmable completion code to better handle newlines in lists
    of possible completions (e.g., `complete -W').

l.  Removed the reserved words from the `bash-builtins' manual page.

m.  Parser error reporting now attempts to do a better job of identifying the
    token in error rather than doing straight textual analysis.

n.  Fixes for Inf/NaN, locales, wide/multibyte characters and zero-length
    arguments in the library snprintf(3) replacement.

o.  `read -e' no longer does command name completion on the first word on
    the line being read.

p.  `select' now returns failure if the read of the user's selection fails.

q.  Fixed a bug that could cause a core dump when setting $PIPESTATUS.

r.  Fixes to not allocate so many job slots when the shell is running a loop
    with job control enabled in a subshell of an interactive shell.

s.  Fixed a bug in the trap code that caused traps to be inherited by
    command substitutions in some cases.

t.  Fixed a bug that could cause alias expansion to inappropriately expand
    the word following the alias.

u.  Fixed a bug in the `kill' builtin that mishandled negative pid arguments.

v.  The parser is less lenient when parsing assignment statements where the
    characters before the `=' don't comprise a valid identifier.

w.  The arithmetic expression evaluation code now honors the setting of the
    `-u' option when expanding variable names.

x.  Fixed the arithmetic evaluation code to allow array subscripts to be
    assigned (`let b[7]=42') and auto-incremented and auto-decremented
    (e.g., b[7]++).

y.  Reimplemented the existing prompt string date and time expansions using
    strftime(3), which changed the output of \@ in some locales.

z.  Fixed a bug that could cause a core dump when a special shell variable
    (like RANDOM) was converted to an array with a variable assignment.

aa. Fixed a bug that would reset the handler for a signal the user had
    trapped to a function that would exit the shell when setting the exit
    trap in a non-interactive shell.

bb. Changed the execve(2) wrapper code to check whether or not a failing
    command is a directory before looking at whether a `#!' interpreter
    failed for some reason.

cc. Fixed a bug in the command printing code so it no longer inserts a `;'
    after a newline, which produces a syntax error when reused as input.

dd. The code that expands $PS4 no longer inherits the `-x' flag.

ee. The bash-specific completion functions may now take advantage of the
    double-TAB and M-?  features of the standard readline completion
    functions.

ff. The mail checking code no longer prints a message if the checked file's
    size has not increased, even if the access time is less than the modification time.

gg. Rewrote the variable symbol table code: there is now a stack of
    contexts, each possibly including a separate symbol table; there can
    be more than one temporary environment supplied to nested invocations
    of `./source'; the temporary environments no longer require so much
    special-case code; shell functions now handle the temporary environment
    and local variables more consistently; function scope exit is faster now
    that the entire symbol table does not have to be traversed to dispose of
    local variables; it is now easier to push vars from the temporary
    environment to the shell's variable table in posix mode; some duplicated
    code has been removed.

hh. Regularized the error message printing code; builtin_error is now called
    more consistently, and common error message strings are handled by small
    functions.  This should make eventual message translation easier.

ii. Error messages now include the line number in a script when the shell
    is not interactive.

jj. Array subscript expansion now takes place even when the array variable is
    unset, so side effects will take place.

kk. Fixed a bug in the SICGHLD child-reaping code so that it won't find
    jobs already marked as terminated if the OS reuses pids quickly enough.

ll. Fixed a bug that could cause a signal to not interrupt the `wait'
    builtin while it was waiting for a background process to terminate.

mm. A couple of changes to make it easier for multiple shells to share history
    files using `history -n', `history -r', and `history -w'.

nn. The `getopts' builtin always increments OPTIND to point to the next
    option to be handled when an option is returned, whether it's valid
    or not, as POSIX 1003.x-2001 requires.

oo. Changed some parts of the expansion code to avoid allocating and
    immediately freeing memory without using the results for anything.

pp. The shell now keeps track of $IFS internally, updating its internal map
    each time the variable is assigned a new value (or at local scope exit).
    This saves thousands of hash lookups for IFS, which, while individually
    cheap, add up.

qq. Rewrote the hash table code:  searching and insertion are much faster now,
    and it uses a better string hashing function; augmented the function
    interface to simplify other parts of the code and remove duplicated code

rr. The shell now uses a simple, generic `object cache' for allocating and
    caching words and word lists, which were the major users of
    malloc/free.

ss. Fixed the assignment statement parsing code to allow whitespace and
    newlines in subscripts when performing array element assignment.

tt. The shell now issues many fewer calls to sigprocmask and other signal
    masking system calls.

uu. Fixed the `test' and conditional command file comparison operators to
    work right when one file has a non-positive timestamp and the other
    does not exist.

vv. Fixed some cases where the special characters '\001' and '\177' in the
    values of variables or positional parameters caused incorrect expansion
    results.

2.  Changes to Readline

a.  Fixed output of comment-begin character when listing variable values.

b.  Added some default key bindings for common escape sequences produced by
    HOME and END keys.

c.  Fixed the mark handling code to be more emacs-compatible.

d.  A bug was fixed in the code that prints possible completions to keep it
    from printing empty strings in certain circumstances.

e.  Change the key sequence printing code to print ESC as M\- if ESC is a
    meta-prefix character -- it's easier for users to understand than \e.

f.  Fixed unstifle_history() to return values that match the documentation.

g.  Fixed the event loop (rl_event_hook) to handle the case where the input
    file descriptor is invalidated.

h.  Fixed the prompt display code to work better when the application has a
    custom redisplay function.

i.  Changes to make reading and writing the history file a little faster, and
    to cope with huge history files without calling abort(3) from xmalloc.

j.  The vi-mode `S' and `s' commands are now undone correctly.

3.  New Features in Bash

a.  If set, TMOUT is the default timeout for the `read' builtin.

b.  `type' has two new options:  `-f' suppresses shell function lookup, and
    `-P' forces a $PATH search.

c.  New code to handle multibyte characters.

d.  `select' was changed to be more ksh-compatible, in that the menu is
    reprinted each time through the loop only if REPLY is set to NULL.
    The previous behavior is available as a compile-time option.

e.  `complete -d' and `complete -o dirnames' now force a slash to be
    appended to names which are symlinks to directories.

f.  There is now a bindable edit-and-execute-command readline command,
    like the vi-mode `v' command, bound to C-xC-e in emacs mode.

g.  Added support for ksh93-like [:word:] character class in pattern matching.

h.  The  $'...' quoting construct now expands \cX to Control-X.

i.  A new \D{...} prompt expansion; passes the `...' to strftime and inserts
    the result into the expanded prompt.

j.  The shell now performs arithmetic in the largest integer size the
    machine supports (intmax_t), instead of long.

k.  If a numeric argument is supplied to one of the bash globbing completion
    functions, a `*' is appended to the word before expansion is attempted.

l.  The bash globbing completion functions now allow completions to be listed
    with double tabs or if `show-all-if-ambiguous' is set.

m.  New `-o nospace' option for `complete' and `compgen' builtins; suppresses
    readline's appending a space to the completed word.

n.  New `here-string' redirection operator:  <<< word.

o.  When displaying variables, function attributes and definitions are shown
    separately, allowing them to be re-used as input (attempting to re-use
    the old output would result in syntax errors).

p.  There is a new configuration option `--enable-mem-scramble', controls
    bash malloc behavior of writing garbage characters into memory at
    allocation and free time.

q.  The `complete' and `compgen' builtins now have a new `-s/-A service'
    option to complete on names from /etc/services.

r.  `read' has a new `-u fd' option to read from a specified file descriptor.

s.  Fix the completion code so that expansion errors in a directory name
    don't cause a longjmp back to the command loop.

t.  Fixed word completion inside command substitution to work a little more
    intuitively.

u.  The `printf' %q format specifier now uses $'...' quoting to print the
    argument if it contains non-printing characters.

v.  The `declare' and `typeset' builtins have a new `-t' option.  When applied
    to functions, it causes the DEBUG trap to be inherited by the named
    function.  Currently has no effect on variables.

w.  The DEBUG trap is now run *before* simple commands, ((...)) commands,
    [[...]] conditional commands, and for ((...)) loops.

x.  The expansion of $LINENO inside a shell function is only relative to the
    function start if the shell is interactive -- if the shell is running a
    script, $LINENO expands to the line number in the script.  This is as
    POSIX-2001 requires.

y.  The bash debugger in examples/bashdb has been modified to work with the
    new DEBUG trap semantics, the command set has been made more gdb-like,
    and the changes to $LINENO make debugging functions work better.  Code
    from Gary Vaughan.

z.  New [n]<&word- and [n]>&word- redirections from ksh93 -- move fds (dup
    and close).

aa. There is a new `-l' invocation option, equivalent to `--login'.

bb. The `hash' builtin has a new `-l' option to list contents in a reusable
    format, and a `-d' option to remove a name from the hash table.

4.  New Features in Readline

a.  Support for key `subsequences':  allows, e.g., ESC and ESC-a to both
    be bound to readline functions.  Now the arrow keys may be used in vi
    insert mode.

b.  When listing completions, and the number of lines displayed is more than
    the screen length, readline uses an internal pager to display the results.
    This is controlled by the `page-completions' variable (default on).

c.  New code to handle editing and displaying multibyte characters.

d.  The behavior introduced in bash-2.05a of deciding whether or not to
    append a slash to a completed name that is a symlink to a directory has
    been made optional, controlled by the `mark-symlinked-directories'
    variable (default is the 2.05a behavior).

e.  The `insert-comment' command now acts as a toggle if given a numeric
    argument:  if the first characters on the line don't specify a
    comment, insert one; if they do, delete the comment text

f.  New application-settable completion variable:
    rl_completion_mark_symlink_dirs, allows an application's completion
    function to temporarily override the user's preference for appending
    slashes to names which are symlinks to directories.

g.  New function available to application completion functions:
    rl_completion_mode, to tell how the completion function was invoked
    and decide which argument to supply to rl_complete_internal (to list
    completions, etc.).

h.  Readline now has an overwrite mode, toggled by the `overwrite-mode'
    bindable command, which could be bound to `Insert'.

i.  New application-settable completion variable:
    rl_completion_suppress_append, inhibits appending of
    rl_completion_append_character to completed words.

j.  New key bindings when reading an incremental search string:  ^W yanks
    the currently-matched word out of the current line into the search
    string; ^Y yanks the rest of the current line into the search string,
    DEL or ^H deletes characters from the search string.

-- 
``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer
( ``Discere est Dolere'' -- chet )

Chet Ramey, CWRU    chet AT po DOT CWRU DOT Edu    http://cnswww.cns.cwru.edu/~chet/

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